Ethics: Assessing Content and Behavior of the Media 1/26/15 10:40 PM • Some critics ridicule the idea that competitive and profit-driven media can operate within an ethical framework. But most people disagree, saying that no media system can exist very long without public confidence, and that requires accurate, honest, and believable communication. • Ethical behavior in a general sense simply means that people should not lie, steal, cheat, or commit other antisocial acts. Ethics is doing what is “right,” but the problem is that different people define “right” differently. Thus, the need exists for serious attention to media ethics in a society increasingly concerned about the ethics of all occupational groups and professionals. • Technology opens up new avenues for ethical concerns, and the digital media have great capacity both for good works and mischief. • Media ethics is not an obscure or irrelevant topic but something that arises daily as citizens observe the way media institutions relate to their communities as participants, observers, and critics. Ethical dilemmas also arise over the content of the media—whether it is entertainment, news, opinion, or advertising—as well as over the behavior of media people. • Under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, there is no requirement that the media be fair, responsible, or accurate. The courts have stated this quite explicitly, yet increasingly there is a higher standard of media performance evident in libel cases and other legal action against the mass and specialized media. • Institutional media ethics have evolved considerably since the press of the early years of American journalism. During that time the press was often scandalous, making unwarranted biased attacks on political figures with little regard for truth or accuracy. Later, a sensational press played on the public’s morbid curiosity to stir up the audience and attract readers. • A consistent thread promoting media ethics over the years has been media criticism, which dates back to the nineteenth century. Critics typically charged the press with violating common decency and obscuring the truth. This has kept public attention focused on the need for ethical standards. • Typically, media ethics have centered on three major issues: accuracy and fairness in reporting and other activities; the behavior of reporters, especially in relation to their sources; and avoidance of conflicts of interest. • Standardized codes of media ethics are difficult to establish because there are few ethical imperatives that work in all situations. Also, most codes of ethics andguidelines are so general that they are not always applicable to specific circumstances. For these reasons and others, a system of situational ethics has long been advocated for the media. • In one form or another, various codes of ethics have spread to virtually every part of the communication industry. Once mainly in the purview of journalism, there are now formalized ethical standards in advertising, public relations, opinion polling, market research, sports writing, and other areas. The fact that they exist, however, does not mean that they will be followed. • New technologies of communication, especially in these past ten years, have raised a variety of ethical questions and controversies. The speed of these new tools and their reach makes them both liberating and dangerous devices that warrant discussion. They affect virtually all aspects of the media industries and much of society. • An important principle for the future is that voluntary methods of resolving ethical dilemmas are typically preferable to those that eventually end up in the courts. To date most of the impetus for media ethics has come internally from the media industries themselves and from communications education. This might not always be the